The Walking Dead

Scene of crime: FX UK

Defendants: Executive Producer Frank Darabont & Gale Anne Hurd

Case for the defence:

The dead walk! The Walking Dead began life as a comic book before being signed up to a limited run of six episodes to see if their was appetite for seeing the undead eat the living. There is, and there'll be 13 more episodes hitting our screens in October. This first series has introduced us to sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes first as he awakes from a coma to discover that the undead have mostly conquered the world and then on his quest to Atlanta, Georgia, US as he hopes to find his family.

The short (by US standards) series means that he's reunited by the third episode, much to the disquiet of friend and colleague Shane Callies, who had taken Rick's place as man of the family in more ways than one. The survivors include a range of mostly working-class to lower-middle class survivors based on a hill on the outskirts of the city. With minorities forced to live with racists, and the living desperate to survive, momentum comes from the human drama rather than any zombie-slaying.

By the end we discover that these are Type P & Type F zombies due to an infection of unknown origin that turns all who are infected into the undead in hours. With no city safe due to the sheer mass of zombies, the survivors are determined to find somewhere they can live in peace.

Witness statements:

"Finally! We’ve waited so long – far too long – for a zombie TV series to arrive, and the quality of Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s ongoing comic is such that it’s been well worth the wait... Our only disappointment is that the series’ initial order is just six episodes. IT’S NOT ENOUGH!

"Our only complaint is that six episodes simply ISN'T ENOUGH!

"The way the scriptwriters handle the character of Shane continues to fascinate." – Edited statements from Ian Berriman, SFX

"The more I think about it, the more I believe that the way the big writing shake-up of The Walking Dead staff is going to make or break the show. Although I might be overestimating the importance of the event, the exact nature of which is still elusive, it definitely looks like Frank Darabont wants to take a more auteur-driven approach to the show, working hands-on with all the scripts and only farming out stories to freelancers when absolutely necessary.

"I don't think we'll really be able to judge this show fairly until it gets the time to stretch in its 13-episode second season." - Leonard Pierce, The AV Club

Findings:

Case for the defence is commended for using Comic, not Graphic Novel. Take away the pictures and you rarely have the kind of sound dialogue and character development that makes a good novel (and one year for Public Lechery for those who just complained that they'd miss the most common superpower).

This is demonstrated in episode Vatos by the comic's author, Robert Kirkman, which is by far the weakest episode. The series as a whole has weak dialogue and broadly painted characters, most of whom are barely seen and their names forgettable, but Vatos is the nadir. I'm expected to believe that hardened perps are really just nurses and porters looking after the aged, and that a simple couple of lines of dialogue can change everyone.

In terms of characters, honest Rick Grimes is only interesting because he's compared with his pallid wife. Instead, and like Mad Men, it's the morally confusing characters who are of most interest – former partner (and unaware cuckold) Shane and racist-but-practical Daryl are the two who are the most human and most interesting. Other times when we are introduced to characters it's jaw-grindingly clear who will die, as is the case with two girls fishing and bonding and reminiscing about their father. It's not just a zombie bite that can induce vomiting.

Despite this the series as a whole moved at a good pace – while Vatos had one character rescued in the same episode, another rescue was drawn over two episodes (or perhaps even series). The scientist and the Centre for Disease Control was rather clunkily done, and with a heavy dose of Exposition Computer.

Verdict & sentence:

My judgment is appropriate to a series on the undead – it's not a full reprieve, nor a full punishment. On the whole, the characters are pale, disposable and it's heavily signed when they are of importance. However, some such as Shane and Daryl stand out and will continue to generate interest. Likewise, the focus on the human drama over zombie slaying has stopped this from rotting in the schedules.

Yet some episodes have been clumsily done and the usual zombie clichés – relatives who won't slay their loved ones, people unprepared to fight – are there. That they have chosen to site themselves in Camp Sitting Duck with no defence nor weapons or training is a dissolution of their civic service. Judges know how to cope with zombies –start shooting and don't stop till the undead are dead.

Overall, I look forward to judging the second series. Case adjourned.

Case File 007Wii: GoldenEye 007

Scene of crime: Wii

Defendant: Eurocom, developer

Case for the defence:

GoldenEye 077 is a first-person shooter reimagining, not a remake, of the 1997 N64 classic of the same name. With Daniel Craig replacing Pierce Brosnan as Bond the game has been given a darker feel to reflect how the latest Bond films.

Likewise the original story has been reimagined, mostly following a modernised version of the GoldenEye film and new versions of the original characters appear, including Alec Trevelyan and Xenia Onatopp.

Released only on the Wii, players can use the Wiimote, the Wii Zapper, Gamecube or Classic controllers to play the game, giving the welcome option to play the 'traditional' way with controllers, or point at the screen and shoot with the Wiimote. The game engine is based on Dead Space so has a developed and smooth Wiimote use, although aiming is still rather shaky.

The dark tone is clearly aimed at the Call of Duty market, where grey and moody (or, if in the desert, sandy and moody) are the prevailing tones. In addition, the free online multiplayer option means that Nintendo's rather sparse online community has a new title to play with.

Witness statements:

"Playing updated versions of the original Dam and Facility levels in the single-player campaign is a fun experience at first, but the game as a whole suffers from generic level design, awful quick-time events, and a terrible final boss fight...

"GoldenEye 007 doesn’t feel like the retro dream it’s meant to be. This Bond game is lost in limbo somewhere between last generation and modern day shooters. Only diehard Bond or FPS fans with nothing but a Wii should bother picking this one up." – Tim Turi, GameInformer

"Despite some painfully dumb enemy AI, the campaign is worth your time, especially since it won’t take long, and the multiplayer split-screen is a blast — both in the actual gameplay and the nostalgic feelings it will illicit.

Overall, GoldenEye 007 does the name proud. A good reboot of a classic game, and a must have for the FPS starved fans on the Wii." – Ryan Fleming, Digital Trends

Findings:

Reimaging is the same as a remake, just as every time a perp engages in a "trivial matter" he soon finds out that he's actually carried out a major infraction of the law. And that's just what this is, a big crime that's trying to get away with it.

Gameplay is grey. The original game, which I booted up on the N64 in the Hall of Records, is Bond through-and-through, from the mock BBCFC classification (impersonating a government department, ten years to the development team on that one) to the 'dossier' save files and Bond music. The Wii version starts with a long, flat copyright notice and fades to grey and generic music that could be found in any shooter.

I like having options and stuck with the Wii Zapper as it reminded me of my own Lawgiver, but that the training mission consists of assassinating government staff is not condoned.

Verdict & sentence:

The last time I sentenced someone for Remake Perpetuated as a Reimagining I had to go up against Charles Bronson. I won.

Nothing tells me that this is Bond, the atmosphere is lacking and it's replace with Daniel Craig and voice acting that has so many flat lines I've declared the script legally dead. I think that's for the best for even the afterlife is beyond my jurisdiction, for now.

The gamemakers have taken Call of Duty and simply added Daniel Craig's features and a vague reference to the 1995 film. Then they added shaky controls and a pedestrian gameplay, other than Bond can now happy slap and upload the contents to YouTube with his mobile phone.

Verdict: Execution. I would consider using a PP7 to carry this out but not being Bond fans you wouldn't recognise the reference. On your knees and face the wall.

Case File C00G4N: The Trip

Scene of crime: BBC Two

Defendants: Producers Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter

Case for the defence: Comedians and impressionists Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon star as semi-fictionalised versions of themselves in a six-restaurant, Michelin-starred tour of the north of England. Although based on their real live personas, this is presented as a standard comedy format and not as a documentary, once popular in the early 21st-century.

Coogan is supposed to have accepted an Observer commission to review restaurants in a bid to impress his American girlfriend Misha, but when she pulls out he takes Rob instead. Along the way they bicker, usually in-character as a celebrity, do drugs, cheat on partners and try and get one up on the other. They also eat some exceedingly good food.

Witness statements:

"Underneath it all, though, runs the question of what it is the Coogan character thinks he’s looking for in life. Largely improvised, the programme blooms to become a very touching exploration of friendship and ageing.

"Nothing happens. Everything is happening." - Damien Love, The Herald

"It’s determinedly uneventful, hardly penetrative in terms of character and not especially funny. But what in other hands would be maddening, or soporific ends up being strangely beguiling – an exercise in trying to hold an audience with the tiniest of titbits. Coogan and Brydon give the viewer so little that after a while you start filling in the gaps yourself. Ultimately, of course, it’s all down to the relationship, and here the implication is plain – the two of them belong together." – John Preston, the Daily Telegraph


Findings:

By rights I ought to commit summary justice – two comedians playing exaggerated versions of themselves, swearing to never return to British TV, this has "meta" written all over it, and for the public good that's an automatic execution. However, they just get away with it – just – as they don't draw obvious attention to it. Even Brydon calling "you're stuck in a metaphor" to Coogan as he falls off stepping stones comes across as genuine rather than contrived.

The problem is the storyline. It doesn't completely lack one, with Coogan's attempts to work out where his live should go and what family means, but it doesn't go deep. The pilot, with the tension between Brydon and Coogan, both slightly envious of the other, and Coogan and his ex, led to laughs amongst our test group. However, it never goes further and like Brydon's constant use of impressions, it gets grating.

At the Justice Department we know to spot tell-tale sings in perps if they are behaving in a pretentious manner in public (sentencing guideline: five to 50 years stretch in the cube). Philosophy, particularly foreign philosophy, poetry. The pair are in the Lake District, so poetry is the charge. But beyond Brydon memorising a poem, he goes no further, learns nothing, does nothing. Brydon is Coogan's catalyst but not much more. Instead of creating depth, they flesh out or bring in some minor characters. It's no substitute.

Citizens looking for more will be, perhaps like the comedy pair spoiled on Michelin-starred food, be looking for more.

Verdict & sentence:

Occasionally, a judge has to use discretion and balance mitigating factors against the crime. Reluctantly, I am going to admit mitigating evidence here and restrained from the summary execution. However, let us not forget that a crime has taken place.

The producers and Steve Coogan, I sentence you to re-education classes. Rob Brydon, you never did much, you are free to go – once the Justice Department surgeons remove your vocal chords.

Birdsong

Scene of crime: The Comedy Theatre, London

Defendants: Stage adaptor Rachel Wagstaff, director Trevor Nunn. Original author Sebastian Faulks.

Case for the defence:

Sebastian Faulks' World War I epic Birdsong has been in film development limbo for several years, its subject – the 1910 meeting of a young Englishman and his affair with his French hostess, his subsequent service in the war, and his descendents' lives in the 1970s – has been thought inadaptable. However, Wagstaff does so and despite trimming the 1970s section, this is an epic at around three hours with one intermission and a five-minute break.

The play starts, as we're told on the projector screen, in 1910 in a very conventional play, one that could have been written at the time – a young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, arrives at a well-to-do family house and is entertained. So far so conventional, but when he hears his host beating his wife, Isabelle, Wraysford's attraction to this older woman grows until they embark on an affair. They are found out and elope, but before long Isabelle tires of their poor life and returns, devasting Wraysford.

Act I ends with the sound of war and the stage comes to life – the moving backdrop is now not just a projector screen but three-dimensional, the trenches. As we return in Act II, we're introduced to Sapper Jack Firebrace, a pious man who has a turn at entertaining the troops in drag, but he angers the-now Lt Wraysford by sleeping on duty. Despite the threat of execution for this, the two become friends, or as close as two solitary types can. Wraysford wants to see Firebrace's tunnels beneath the Bosch's lines and despite attacking in the bloodbath of the Somme stays at the front.

His previous life catches up with him when his unit is stationed in Isabelle's old village and he seeks her out. Finding her, seven years later he still loves her despite her wounds, but Isabelle has fallen for a German soldier and won't return to Wraysford. Nor will she tell him about his son. Isabelle's sister tries to, but it is for nothing and he returns to the front. By 1918 he is down in the mines with Firebrace when the Germans devastate their tunnel network, Wraysford manages to blast his way out, saved by a German soon after the Armistice is signed.

Witness statements:


"Nunn’s direction is sometimes turgid, with unconvincing sing-songs round the piano. The play’s most moving moments are the simplest, with Lee Ross as the sapper Jack Firebrace writing letters to his wife and reading her replies. Thanks to Ross’s beautifully simple and direct performance, the scene when he receives terrible news from home is by far the most moving in the play. It is not an easy thing to play uncomplicated goodness without sliding into sentimentality but Ross resists the temptation and moved me to tears.

"…Nevertheless this stage version strikes me as cumbersome and unnecessary, and never comes close to matching the dramatic power and extraordinary tenderness of RC Sherriff’s Journey’s End, written from his personal experience of the Great War, rather than based on scrupulous research like Faulks’s novel. My advice would be to stay at home and read the novel, or better yet, a collection of the great poems written by Owen, Sassoon and others who actually served in the First World War." – Charles Spencer, the Daily Telegraph

"Wagstaff’s version retains many of the novel’s intriguing elements: its concern with class, its sense of war as an exercise in blinkered bureaucracy, its depiction of an early-20th century crisis of masculinity. It’s poetic, too, and beautiful in places, thanks to John Napier’s clever designs, which make generous use of projections by Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington. The sound, by Fergus O’Hare, is also excellent. Besides Barnes, there are skilful performances from Zoe Waites, Nicholas Farrell, Genevieve O’Reilly, and above all Lee Ross as Jack, a tunnel-digger with a quirky music hall sensibility. Yet whereas the novel is often claustrophobic, here there is less visceral immediacy. Events are narrated when they really need to be dramatised. The result is too rhetorical: we’re told what we ought to be shown. Barnes has an elegant way with his expository speeches, but Trevor Nunn’s production is often static, and, for all the gravity of its subject matter, it doesn’t engage us fully." – Henry Hitchings, the Evening Standard

"The weakest part of the play is the first third which deals with the sojourn of a young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, in the Amiens of 1910. As a working guest in the house of a rich manufacturer, he falls in love with his host's wife, Isabelle: an experience that colours his whole life. But, although we see the affair through Stephen's eyes, this feels like filleted Faulks. The industrial unrest that provides a context to the affair is cursorily dealt with. Even the anguish of the cuckolded husband, who in the book rushes from room to room seeking evidence of tainted bedsheets, is reduced to a single cry of jealous rage. But when the play moves to the western front, from 1916 to 1918, it exerts an emotional grip" - Michael Billington, the Guardian

Findings:

Starting a play with not one but three "as you all know" in the first thirty minutes is an automatic year in the cubes. I don't care that you may be trying to evoke the plays of the period, with the preconception with witty talk and singing songs, it comes across as sloppy.

Despite the background of industrial unrest and illicit love – not punishable, yet – the first act feels like any other Edwardian play. It's not until the sound of war that things change for the better. It's not that the first act is bad, but this is a story about war. Here we can commend the director and set designer for not just the uniforms and props but recreating trench and tunnel warfare on stage.

As a Judge I know no woman, but even for me the romance and love was unconvincing and it seemed more an infatuation than a romance. Once together they had some chemistry, but Isabelle could have equally rejected instead o accepted Wraysford's love.

Regarding Wraysford, he seemed lacking. Ben Barnes played him well, particularly as he is on stage for most of the time, but the script took you places and abandoned them. Twice – with card reading then divining the augers - suggested that some hint of his future was to come about, but to no avail. Finally, the theme of Birdsong, and Wraysford horror of birds – the play starts with him describing such a nightmare – goes nowhere. There is an incident with carrier pigeons but no more.

Finally, and appropriately – even I have a sense of humour – the ending. For a long play it felt rushed and not quite clear on its message and what has come from all this.

Verdict & sentence:

Moving and official Justice Department Commendation for Barnes, but Wagstaff and Nunn, I'm taking you down to the cubes. One year for "as you all know" – correction, one year per "as you all know" – and another two for leading us nowhere. Start singing birdies, hope you like your new cage.

Mad Men Exhibit I – The Beautiful Girls

Scene of crime: AMC (US)

Defendants: Writers Dahvi Waller and Matthew Weiner

Case for the defence:

First may I praise you Judge Kritic for your prescient public statement on the lead you have with the Three Dead Kings for now Ida Blankenship has joined the ranks of the dear departed. It simply remains for Duck Phillips to journey to Resyk for your prediction to be complete. May the citizens rejoice at yet another public display of the all-knowingness of our Judges!

Yes, The Beautiful Girls saw the oldest girl, Don's secretary Miss Blankenship, "died as she lived, surrounded by the people she answered phones for", as Roger put it. Her last words were to ask if Don was visiting the toilet. Unfortunately for Don, her death was at her desk in full view of the meeting room with clients and led to sitcomesque attempts to conceal then remove the body. Pete Campbell, although he said nothing, was the man despatched to move Ida and is silent gestures stole that part of the show, edging out Harry's plaintive cry that his mother made the makeshift burial shroud.

Roger, former subject to the Queen of Perversions, seemed to be affected by her death but it did not stop his attempts at wooing Joan. Feeling he had overstepped the mark on discovering that Joan's husband was off to Vietnam, he sent stereotypical Swedish masseuses to "rub her the right way". His demand of a dinner date, eventually accepted, and a mugging that left them bereft of jewellery and cash, led to the mutual rekindling of their romance – with Joan making it clear to Roger she did not regret it.

Dr Faye was another woman to have no regrets in this episodes as it started with her orgasmic screams at the start of the episode. By the end she also states that she had no regrets over being childless, even if it did mean she couldn't deal with normal kids, let alone Sally Draper. Like many a paranoid woman, Dr Faye saw Don's requests for help as premeditated tests – ones that she failed, as Sally hated her.

Why did she get to meet Sally? Because Don's daughter sneaked into the city to see her dad and a kindly stranger took her to SCDP. The fact that Abe, the anti-establishment journalist that Peggy kissed at the party several episodes ago, witnessed Don being "bad with money", as Betty once put it when he tried to hurl dollars at the stranger, probably didn't help Abe's view of 'the Man' being a cruel beast. His attempts to convert Peggy to this initially hit all the wrong notes but by the end of the episode some of what he said had been digested.

This episode was called The Beautiful Girls and while there were some stylised scenes, particularly when Betty came to collect Sally and half the office women where there, it was not about looks but personality. In previous defence statements I have defended Pete as being one of the most interesting characters on the programme, but this episode showed that this is ensemble and the girls are just as deserving of a solid defence.

Witness statements:

"It didn't trouble me that the mugger was black, though it did bring into relief the extent to which the struggle of women in the workplace has replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the series' political undercurrent. [...]

"This is more of an observation than a complaint. The shift in focus makes a lot of sense dramatically: In Peggy and Joan, and now Faye, SCDP has three very different women through whom to explore 1960s workplace realities like the ones Julia's mom powerfully conjured." - John Swansburg, Slate

"We never learn why Miss Blankenship ended up alone and in contact with virtually no one outside the SCDP staff—beyond Roger’s Queen Of Perversions line, I guess—but she was doubtlessly given a different set of choices than those presented to other women on the show, and different from those Sally Draper will face when she grows up.

"Maybe 'choices' is the wrong word. It’s the one Fay uses to describe how got to her late thirties childless but accomplished. But where Fay talks about choices, Peggy talks about limitations. After Joyce leads her into an unexpected date with Abe, she at first recoils at the notion that the nice Fillmore family could be racist then turns the discussion to women. 'Most of the things Negroes can’t do, I can’t do either,' an opinion that takes Abe by surprise. It’s a false equivalency for the reason Abe points out, and for others. But her gripes are legitimate, even if downtown progressive types like Abe—and the counter-culture of the later parts of the decade—couldn’t see them at the time." - Keith Phipps, the AV Club

Findings:

First, Citizen Attorney, Judges do not need flattery, we know the work we do. Second, I agree with your description as this being 'sitcomesque'. Not only the removal of Miss Blankenship's corpse but the orgasmic screams at the start and Roger juggling his telephone calls, all were a tone away from the usual drama. In addition, the clanging of "gee what happened to this neighbourhood?" before the mugging was hard to ignore.

I found this episode far more stylised than normal. While the director no doubt congratulated himself for how the women looked, particularly in Betty's scene in the office, it was guilty of being too staged. Mad Men is highly stylised, yet manages to create a bubble of believability – The Beautiful Girls swelled this bubble and it burst.

The symbolism of the mugging was not lost, although of course I remind all citizens it is their duty to report crimes immediately, lest you be in violation of our ordinances, and Outraging the Public Decency instead of reporting a mugging is not the right option. Both Joan and Roger having their wedding rings taken away by a stranger but they chose to act as if they were single was an interesting development. Roger has been flirting with Joan for some time, and she was an ice queen at the start, but I am not sure if I approve of the new relationship.

The Citizen Attorney barely mentioned Don but I would like to. I am not sure that Don would ask his new conquest Dr Faye to take his child home as he is a man who keeps a clear division between his professional and private life (apart from sex). Even if he does blame it on his secretary's death, Don has previously shown himself to be the type to keep both lives separate unless he can carefully manage this. This lessens the effect of Sally's scene that rouses the entire office – had Don shown how much he valued his private life then the mortifying embarrassment he showed would have been clearer.

Don at least is showing other changes – for the best. He comforts Dr Faye when she confides her insecurities to him. Other, past, lovers, including Betty, would have been scorned. However, Dr Faye's revelation that she 'couldn't sleep' due to thinking and that she wants a dinner to talk to him does not bode well. My mole in the relationship world states that this is not a good thing. May the next bit of evidence attest or deny this.

Verdict & sentence:

Group culpability is a cornerstone of our justice system. However, in this case I am going to split the two writers. Dahvi Waller and Matthew Weiner wrote this together, but I suspect it was Waller that set the sitcom tone. True, Weiner is the producer and could have reined it in, or even set the direction, but the circumstantial evidence is against him. Waller, get your stuff, you're doing time. Two months, cubes, now.

Where are you going Citizen Attorney? I'm not done yet. For nausea-inducing sycophancy in your defence statement I'm sending you to the cubes for a year and stripping of your right to practice.

Mad Men Exhibit H – The Summer Man

Scene of crime: AMC (US)

Defendants: Writers Lisa Albert, Janet Leahy and Matthew Weiner

Case for the defence:

With us now over half-way through the fourth season - a season that has witnessed Don hit new lows and reach the nadir of waking up with waitresses who know his real name - The Summer Man sees Don start his climb back to the top. He's not failing professionally and deserves his place as SCDP partner, but personally he realises that he is not relationship partner material just yet.

We know this as the episode starts with Don narrating his diary – a trick of many a poor script, but Mad Men just about pulls it off, even if it doesn't reveal anything we don't know. At least now we know that Don is beginning to understand what kind of a man he's become.

As he struggles to regain his former composure, others lose theirs. Joan, subject to common room-quality sketches by the art team, loses it with them and with Peggy when the former secretary fires one of them. Betty too loses it, telling Henry she wants a drink when he meets a political wallah – a no-no in Henry's book. But Betty has just seen Don out on a date in the same restaurant with a suspiciously similar blonde, but a good many years her junior. 

Don's date with the Betty lookalike Bethany ends with what at the time would have got them charged with outraging the public decency, but that's probably the last we'll see of her. Instead Don asks Dr Faye out – and this time she accepts, although not after making it on her terms. After speaking about the heartache of not seeing his two-year-old son, Don does not use this as a tearjerker to wheedle his way into Dr Faye's bed but instead acts the gentleman and drops her off at her flat.

Betty's dinner date with Henry ends with a scolding and while she's upset about seeing Don – and boosted by her friend Francine saying he's a 'sad old man' – by the end she's reconciled and doesn't have a fit when Don turns up at baby Gene's second birthday as if he belonged there.

The former husband and wife seem to become adults, while Henry has regressed, driving his car into Don's boxes and then dumping them on the pavement without a look at Don.

Witness statements:

"As for Dr. Miller, I think she holds more interest for Don than she does for me as a character. Apart from the first season, I’ve always found Don’s extramarital (and now post-marital) affairs the least compelling element of the show. Not that these subplots drag, really. But Don’s parade of women has rarely yielded many interesting characters and I don’t yet see Dr. Miller as an exception, however well Cara Buono plays her. I’ve sometimes wondered if this is by design." - Keith Phipps, the AV Club

"At the onset of the episode, Don is badly winded after swimming a lap in the pool. By the end, he's easily besting an athletic lap lane competitor, easily ten years his junior. The promise for redemption is right there, evident and ripe for the taking, but will he continue on this strange new path? Was Anna's death such a motivating catalyst for self-realization that Don will actually set himself on the straight and narrow? Or is this just an extended moment of clarity, balancing on the temporary calm?

"We'd be foolish to predict anything but the latter, but it's impossible not to root for a man so desperate to right his own wrongs." - Johnny Firecloud, Crave Online

Findings:

Narrating a journal to start an episode is a crime – a crime where guilt is assumed unless innocence can be proven. The reason we do this is because in the majority of cases that come our way, voiceovers and journals don't reveal anything we don't already know and it's a lazy way to move on a story. Mad Men has received official commendation for its proper use of flashback, which also presumes immediate guilt, but with voiceover the commendation does not apply. It's not done badly, but just because it's passable doesn't mean it's not criminal.

Don's diary does not reveal much more than what we've already seen or will see and his writing is used to show that he wants to get his life back together. However, as Citizen Witness Firecloud observes, his swims do this best – at the start he gasps for air he's so out of shape, but by the end he's pacing his juniors. Likewise Don's rejection – and contrary to Dr Faye's expectation – of ending the night together and his maturity with Betty also shows his change.

Much as I agree with Firecloud's verdict on the swimming metaphor, I also agree with Citizen Witness Phipps that no woman can match those seen in the first series, Rachel Menken and Midge Daniels. Dr Faye is intelligent and independent (literally, being a consultant), but she lacks the banter and equality that Rachel and Midge had with Don. We saw Don woo Rachel and it was more gripping than this.

Joan and Peggy's confrontation did not tell us much more than what we know – that Joan is bitter over Peggy's rise to power and her status as a sex object and nothing more by the office and her husband. Mad Men gets good reports when it works subtly and this episodes was less subtle than most.

Despite these failings, the evidence presented itself well, particularly Betty's maturation, and we gladly anticipate the next piece for judicial review.

Verdict & sentence:

Lisa Albert, Janet Leahy and Matthew Weiner, your crimes, while you may not view them as major, set a poor example for others in our society. As such I am making an example of you – traffic island, two months, for Wanton Use of Voiceover.

Now to sentence the witnesses. Johnny Firecloud, you get six months in the cubes for Agonising Analogy. "There are some tectonic chess moves at play here" indeed. Take the chess set, you're going to need it in isolation, but your only partner's going to be the earth's tectonic plates. You may be waiting a while for them to make their move.

The Three Dead Kings and Mad Men

A citizen questioned my use of the Three Living and Three Dead, or the Three Dead Kings, in my report on Mad Men The Suitcase. Don't forget creeps, I ask the questions here, and under normal circumstances that citizen would be doing time in the cubes, two years, minimum, Questioning a Judge's Authority. However, as part of our outreach and citizen learning programme, I am going to explain.

The Three Dead Kings is a story from before Brit-Cit, the 15th Century, of three kings hunting boar confronted by three corpses. One king wants to flee, one – and I approve of this – wants to confront them. These corpses say they are not evil (hah! No one is innocent, there's only degrees of guilt) but the kings' ancestors, stating: "While I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine and now I pay the price". The kings are urged to change their ways and not forget them, much like Dickens' Christmas Carol (*Tharg note: this work is now banned so if you are aware of this report to the nearest Judge immediately).

Citizen, look at Mad Men The Suitcase. Duck Phillips, once like Don, an adman with depraving addiction to alcohol, now – while not in the cubes – fired from his office, his career dead but not his drinking.

Miss Blankenship, where a witness statement declares this old woman once was a "hellcat" and "Queen of the Perversions" - you don't have to be a Judge to deduce the connection with kings. But no more. Don is not into perversions, but he is still very much sexually active, unlike Miss Blankenship (citizens, report for a mind scrub if you have inadvertently thought of Miss Blankenship active with Roger Sterling). She is now a sexual laughing stock and without family, something the divorced Don risks alienating.

Finally, there is the truly dead, Anna Draper who apparently makes a brief appearance in spirit form and Don't ultimate fate (this was before rejuvenation chambers).

I have used the Three Dead Kings and not Three Living and Three Dead as each of the dead are an aspect of Don. Whether he will heed the warning like the Three Living I don't know, I'd need Psi Division to tell me, but he is showing signs of the horror that the Three Living had when they saw the Three Dead. In this case one of the Three Dead – Duck – beat him down while Don was covered in vomit from his drinking. If that doesn't hammer home the message nothing will.

Lesson ends.